Monday, December 30, 2013

Mano a Mano

--Mbeki, Mandela, Tutu,

Rainer Hachfeld (Neues Deutschland)

We have now sunk to a depth at which

restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men

--George Orwell

_____________________

Recently deceased South African activist Nelson Mandela was revered by many as a person who shifted a society away from apartheid,
a repressive policy of racial separation. Mandela spent 27 years in
prison based upon the fact that he founded, supervised and led the
guerrilla wing of the African National Congress (ANC) movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe (abbreviated "MK"), translated as "Spear of the Nation".

Mandela
was given a life sentence for his direct involvement in bombing
campaigns, among other forms of terror and violence. The Mandela that
emerged to be lionized by the West was this former Communist who grew
capitalist spots.

Mandela was a bomber, a favored
activity of terrorists and militants as it is cheap and effective,
creating terror due to its spectacularly violent, random and
indiscriminate nature. Onto the kindly-looking elder statesman Mandela
it is easy to project the myth of the long-suffering inmate, but this
image belies the other Mandela.

Here's another view of the man and his legacy:

If there is anything that the world ought to mourn, not only today, but
every day, it is a horrifying reality in which a South African woman is more likely to be raped than to learn to read, a quarter of the men admitto having raped and men with AIDS believe that they can find a cure by raping a baby.For Western liberals, Mandela’s death provides them with permission
to stop caring about South Africa. Having reduced South Africa to
Mandela, his death permanently removes its existence from their minds.
They may show up to the theater if Denzel Washington or Jamie Foxx
decide to play Nelson Mandela. Otherwise they will comfortably banish
the entire country to the dusty attic of forgotten history.Meanwhile one child is raped every three minutes and three children are murdered every day (South Africa in the Shadows).

Our relationship with terrorists is ambivalent. While we choose not to
negotiate with them, we do accept them as world leaders. Why were they
bad then, and good now? Are there good terrorists and bad ones, and where is
the dividing line?

In an absolute sense, if terrorism
is "evil", then time does not ameliorate that evil. An evil act remains
so in perpetuity. Good does not emerge from evil -- is this not the
basis of western legal thought?

Are we willing to see
someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) as a freedom fighter, versus a
terrorist? For surely as god made little green apples, he is that to
his acolytes.

When terrorists used airplanes as bombs
and attacked the World Trade
Center, the U.S. began 12 years of continuous warfare resulting in an
unknown number of casualties. History has shown that Mandela was an
existential threat to the continued existence of South Africa, while the
al Qaeda threat to America was a pinprick, in comparison. Yet which nation reacted in a more tempered manner to its threat?

The
United States sentenced Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to death
and terminated him for roughly the same type of activity for which
Mandela served 27 years. PVT Manning has been delivered a 35-year
sentence, eight years more than Mandela received.

Was Manning's threat to the existence of the U.S. as significant and effective as that of Mandela's to S.A.?

The facts:

Manning was not involved in espionage, nor did he work for a worldwide Communist or terrorist organization (as did Mandela)

Manning never used violence

Manning
was not dedicated to the destruction or overthrow of the U.S.
government. His actions were not tactically or strategically significant

In Ranger's opinion, Manning was railroaded in comparison to Mandela, who received a fair trial.So how do Americans justify calling Mandela a "symbol of Freedom" while throwing Manning into a black hole for 35 years?

Did
Manning receive a fair trial, or has our justice system been subverted
by trumped-up security concerns posing as justice? The 35-year sentence
(which was noted as being "light") is Kafkaesque, while the whitewashing
of Mandela as Ghandi-esque freedom fighter is like something out of a
DC Comic story line.

Mandela's conviction was proportional to his crimes, while Manning's was not, and it was the result of a punitive show trial. Manning will never be a hero of mythic status. If a society is known by its enemies, we chose a poor example with Manning.

Further,
how did Mandela, Sadat, Begin, Gerry Adams and before them, myriad
Nazis transform themselves by entering the historical dry cleaners,
emerging as clean world leaders? Where and when is the pivot point at which terrorists become no longer terrorists? Or is it that our memory is short, or that we no longer care?

In an absolute sense, if terrorism is "evil", then time does not ameliorate that evil. An evil act remains so in perpetuity. Good does not emerge from evil -- is this not the basis of western legal thought?

30 comments:

Mandela was, as you point out, about the same man as Menachim Begin. The terror acts that the Umkhonto people did were certainly no worse than the Irgun.

Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a peace deal for the Sinai. And you want to bitchslap Mandela for (along with Tutu and the other ANC bosses) brokering a deal that ended decades of vicious racism and civil war?

And "a fair trial"? A black man? In South Africa? That's you making a little joke, right?

And how is Mandela guilty of the fucking disaster that is South Africa while you let the Bothas and their thugs go unmentioned? Mandela is responsible for the apartheid, the internal repression, the bantustans? WTF, man?

As you yourself pointed out; Mandela was just a man who did what he had to for his people; no different from a Washington or a Begin. When those people die they get remembered for the good they did, not the times they fucked up; that's just politeness.

Plus what the hell did you THINK the U.S. government was gonna do? Send a dead flower? The U.S. government needs the goodwill of the ANC government. If they'd said Mandela was fucking Georgi Balanchine we'd have sent them a fucking ballet slipper.

Governments have been making nice with assholes since there WERE governments. Do you really think that was going to change? Remember when Stalin, that mass-murderer was "Uncle Joe", our bestie? Yeah, we needed him to beat the damn Nazis. We've made goo-goo eyes at thugs WAY worse than Mandela; the Diems, Duvalier, Pinochet, Somoza, Batista in Cuba, the Shah...and you're getting all cranky about a few posthumous kisses for a brotha? Damn, but you're getting crotchety.

And as for what this "says" about Manning, McVeigh, and the "War on Terror..?

Manning was jugged as a warning to all potential whistleblowers. You thought the intel agencies were going to set him up in his own boutique in San Francisco?

McVeigh was convicted in "a fair trial" for mass murder.

And the "War on Terror" as we both well know is actually the "War on Certain Groups Considered Hostile to U.S. National Interests". "Terrorism" is just a bullshit smokescreen - you notice the complete lack of U.S. operations aimed at the MEK people operating in Iran, or at the Tamil Tigers back in the day, or against the MEND people in Nigeria. You and I know that the "policies and practices" have nothing to do with terrorism except as a way to get the fools watching Fox News and 60 Minutes to nod along like those little bobblehead dolls.

While I agree that many aspects of that war are foolish, counterproductive, and mistaken do you genuinely consider it likely that suddenly the U.S. government will stop using the "war on terror" formula and begin discussing the actual complexities and lack of moral clarity involved in most conflicts, everywhere, including the ones the U.S. government wants a piece of the action in?

I have no idea where the hell you're going with this one, but "all over the place" seems to describe it.

Chief,If i'm all over the place does that invalidate what i'm saying in this essay?Mc Veighs trial was a farce. It was a show trial and did not address the fact that Mc V did not act alone. Nor did Mandela.Mandela was a killer as was Mc V but he got life and Mc V got death.So exactly how was Mandela railroaded? I think that him escaping the death penalty was proof of a fair trial. I may be all over the place but this thought is solid. Happy new year .jim

That's what I'm trying to untangle here, jim. There's so much going on in this piece that I'm not sure how we get from the opening bit "Mandela was a commie terrorist so We, the People, should have shit on his grave not praised him" to "Our policies on "Terror" and terrorism should be reevaluated."

So is your thought that Mandela sucks? That McVeigh got railroaded? (Seriously? You're ribbing us on that one, right?) That the fact that our government says one thing and does another is a problem so crippling to self-governance that we should be storming Capitol Hill to demand changes?

I'll be the first to to agree that I have no fucking idea what much of our "Middle Eastern policy" is trying to achieve. But I've had that problem ever since I realized that the U.S. is trying to reconcile two impossible things; uncritical support for Israel on the one hand and influence over Israel's political rivals/enemies on the other. I'm not the only one - hell, in '48 Truman's whole Middle Eastern section at State told him flat out that he could have Israelis or Arabs but not both.

Throw in the hard work we and Israel did between '48 and the Eighties showing the Arabs that their secular governments were worth shit politically and militarily and that the only people willing to stand up and kick Israeli (and Soviet, in Afghanistan) balls were the jihadis, and you've got a hell of a lot of the makings of the current clusterfuck, where we don't seem to have a clue whether all the wogs we're killing are actually getting us anywhere...

AND add to that that all governments, everywhere, have indulged in lies and deceptions to cloak their policies and practices in pretty clothes...

So what ARE you saying here? That the U.S. government should always and everywhere speak the unvarnished "truth" - assuming that you can find a "truth" regarding political and military actions that everyone agrees on?

Yeah, that'd be nice. But when in holy hell has that EVER happened? And how would you recommend going about making that happen?

But Sadat? Certainly an Egyptian nationalist and revolutionary against the Brit backed playboy Farouk who was a world wide joke to the world back in the 50s. And certainly would have been an enemy of the US in WW2 when he (or his group of co-revolutionaries) tried to invite the Axis into Egypt to get rid of the Brits. And initially he was a backer of and later a betrayer of Nasser. But a terrorist like Begin or McVeigh or Mandela? I don't see that. Wasn't he a victim of terrorists. Or do you know of some gelignite games in his youth?

Manning and Snowden, I am not a fan of either. But if we release Pollard (which I am against) who also had a life sentence, then Bradley M and Edward S should at least get the same 26 years that Pollard has served.

I am impelled to comment......Jim makes perfect sense to me. If his essay is all over the place, it is b/c our policy and our ethics are all over the place.

How can one NOT see that McVeigh and Mandela are the same person? Actually, it is easy to make the case that Mandela was a far more heinous criminal with far more innocent blood on his hands than McVeigh ever conceived of in his most expansive revolutionary fantasies.

Yet one of these men is pilloried in the press and then executed and the other merely gets a long prison sentence, from which he emerges an international superstar - and with many declaring him wrongly imprisoned.

And, manning, who killed nobody nor even attempted to commit terrorists acts has the same sentence (in years) as Mandela.

That is schizophrenia masked by marketing and sloganeering.

What is scary that people buy it. Mandela is hero! The ends justifies the means. He helped to end apartheid! That is sick thinking, IMO.

The Mandela story can be massaged to support a liberal meme, whereas McVeigh is anti-liberal big government and therefore is sacrificed. That's all there is to it.

Also, I'm pretty sure that if a Mandela emerged in, say, Portland, and starting blowing people up in the name of justice for American Indian or some such, the good folks of Portland would be NOT seeing this individual(s) as a hero - no more so than Bostonians had a sympathy for the Chechnya Bro.s.

Do we forget that we had MLK who managed to lead a similar societal change (as Mandela) in this country with throwing a single bomb? Isn't that the model that should be praised? And the Mandela's put in their proper place?

Nah, b/c it's got nothing to do with morality, ethics or good policy. We find it entertaining when people on the other side of the world kill each other. We just pick a side, crack a brew and cheer for it just like it's out favorite football team; less passionately actually. Then we parrot whatever the talking heads tell us as if we are regaling each other with deeply thought out, materially correct and moral perspectives. Then we pat ourselves on the back for being such conscientious global citizens.

That the sick thinking comes from so called "progressives" makes me think that this "progress" that is so highly valued above all else is the type of progress that the real red boleshies of days gone by would have approved. Got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, you know, and be thankful that you are going to the gulag for re-education instead of the firing squad, comrade.

This thought is further reinforced when the excuse is made that all governments lie; always have, always will. Suck it up and move along. That is "progress"?

We need more and more of this type of government? If they will lie about war and death, what wouldn't they lie about? Why would we want to pay for more lies?

There is an old Vietnamese proverb: "Duoc lam vua, thua lam giac." Meaning roughly winners are king, losers are pirates). Uncle Ho used it on his class enemies in the mid-fifties when he executed a 100K or so. Pham Van Dong used it again in the late-seventies when he incarcerated several 100K former ARVN for 15 to 18 years in so-called "re-education camps". Manning and McVeigh are losers in my book and desere what they got. But the liberals will probably redeem them into heroes. I see that process has already started.

The video that 'no-one' linked to has been on all the wingnut sites ever since Obama attended Mandela's funeral. But whoever originally posted the video has conveniently mistranslated the words 'ama bhulu' - they do not mean whites in general. It is a derogatory term for Boers many of whom were the leaders of apartheid and their bull-whipped armed policemen. So yes it was a racist song. But the reason Mandela is such a goodie-goodie to the world now is that he did not pull a Ho hi Minh or Pha Van Dong or Stalin or Mao on his former enemies the Boers. He did not kill them, or lock them up, or banish them, he offered official Reconiliation instead. He treated them better than we treated the American Tories after our war of liberation against George III.

The white guy singing with Mandela was a South African Communist - so was much more attuned to a visiting conservative Limbaugh activist rather than a Berkeley guy.

And by the way, I for one have not forgotten that it was Bush 43 who took Mandela and his fellow ANC terrorists off of the Terrorist Watch List.

Mike, a couple of points. I was joking about the white guy being a Berkeley liberal. In reality, he was a Russian agent with KGB background, etc. who was in SA bonding with Mandela's movement.

As you note,'ama bhulu' does translate to refer to the Boers and not necessarily white people in general. However, this is a semantic nuance only. To the blacks in SA any white land owner is a Boer. So Mandela is saying, like a true commie, let's kill all of the land owners and take what they had for ourselves. So he was a true commie in the Redest revolutionary sense as well as a fomenter of race war. The latter he has in common with McVeigh (or at least McVeigh's fantasies). The former makes Mandela extra special. Hardly a hero or a role model.

Mike,Since you mentioned Pollard you may want to read-THE SECRET WAR AGAINST THE JEWS by Loftus and Aaron for a full alternate coverage on that topic.As for Mc V there are several sources available re; his actions , and those of the government. To answer chief- McV did not get a fair trial, nor was he and Nichols alone in that venture. The American people got vengeance but not justice.

Now to a more important point beyond this topic.I say this because No one has commented. I find it hard to be objective when he was essentially told to bugger off , and i'm glad that he hasn't.Either this is an open forum and an open bar or it is chiefs living room and i'm misinformed as top our mission statement. We are not all choir boys or members of a choir.I feel like we are the guys rowing the boat in BEN HUR and are supposed to follow the drum beat called by whom?????This is more important a point than is Mandela is/was a T.But i don't have to pay lip service to him, or to any man.Now back to topic- how is G Washington a T comparable to Mandela??? Name a T act condoned or planned by GW. He was a legit revolutionary with a deep militia background that he translated to the battlefield. So wtf? Saying otherwise is a exercise in fantasy.Manning may be sexually confused but the comment on giving him a boutique was a dismissive denigration of his actions.Yep, i'm all over the place.jim

Mandela was a thug. I kept my mouth shut on Facebook when people left and right were gushing over his memory since I had no want to fight with brain-dead jackasses about a dirt-bag. People conveniently overlook his direct actions with explosives that killed innocent men, women and children. However, they also overlook his involvement in the Blood Diamond movement as well as his support for Charles Taylor that lead to the deaths of tens of thousands across several African nations. Its ironic that fellow South African Eeben Barlow (who founded Executive Outcomes) is generally reviled in the West for being a slimy mercenary but Mandela is held up as some kind of g&ddamned paragon of virtue.

Its come out Mandela received some of his thuggery training from the Israeli Mossad. Of course, he did this under the cover of a different identity, but it merely reinforces the fact that we have become the latter day Roman Empire. We train tin-plated dictators, murderous narco-cartel drekwipes and other assort scum and villainy either directly or through our proxies like The Mossad.

One has to truly wonder at how much the death toll of the 20th Century was the result of the US and its imperialistic foreign policy. Its easy to point to truly evil frakkers like Hitler, Stalin, Mao tze-Tung, Pol Pot and so forth, but its a helluva lot harder to look in the mirror and realize your own nation commits truly evil and heinous acts through proxy violence. Fundamentally, there is no difference between violence done directly (drone bombings, shelling, missile barrages etc) and done through proxy group of human slime. Dead people are dead people and it matters not one iota whether they were shot, gassed or blown to bits.

1] Loftus is entitled to his ruptured view of Pollard's history, but it is scary when people start believing it. I understood that FOX and ABC (both friends of Israel) terminated his contract as a commentator because of his erroneous and inaccurate reporting.

2] As for McVeigh, for myself I am OK with vengeance. But you are right that we should have gone the extra mile and gotten the other player or players in that bombing.

3] You are correct that it is an open bar or at least advertized as such. So FDChief can opine just as much as you or anybody else here can. If you don't like his opinions then either ignore them or prove them wrong. He and I often disagree with each other. But why take it personal just because he does not agree with you?

4] I never mentioned George Washington (who by the way is my hero) and I never compared him to Mandela. But now that you bring him up, you surely should know that the Iroquois named him the "Burner-of-Towns" after he sent General Sullivan into the Finger Lakes region of upstate western New York where 40 Iroquois towns (and their crops) were destroyed and a thousand Iroquois women and children starved or froze to death along with hundreds of white American Tories.

5] Bradley Manning, by his own choice is now known as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning. So it is 'her' not 'him'. She is eligible for parole in 2018 after serving only eight years including pre-trial confinement. And she probably will make parole since she has both the LGBT community and the conservative anti-big-government community rooting for her. I am hoping the Parole Board does not bend to political correctness of either group. I knew of a few wayward Marines back in the day who served longer sentences for lesser crimes.

6] Sadat? My reading says he was imprisoned by the Brits twice. Once in 41 for suspicion of trying to contact German nationals for help in freeing Egypt from British rule. The other time was I think the one you mentioned in 46 when a fellow member of the Egyptian Free Officers Association shot and killed the puppet Prime Minister. Nothing mentioned on Sadat committing terrorism, just that he and others of that organization were rounded up and arrested. But he may have been involved as an accomplice - I admit he certainly had opportunity later to whitewash his own history. If he had been a terrorist then it is poetic justice that he was himself assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

7] Yes, Mandela was a terrorist and a thug. But again I have to state that the reason he is admired by much of the world is because of his policy of Reconciliation. He did not use the "winners are king, losers are pirates" policy of Hanoi. After he took power he treated his Boer opponents better than we treated our WW2 enemies at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. Not sure why everyone is all of a sudden calling him a fomenter of racial war. Most of the ANC friends and allies in the struggle against apartheid were not other blacks, they were non-black South Africans (including Anglo, Polish, Portuguese, Irish, Jews, Balts, Lebanese, and East Indians - and the great majority were non-communists). Most of his victims were blacks, not whites. I have to suspicion the reason for all the uproar now about him being a racist zealot is because of Obama attending Mandela's funeral. So it is just internal American politics as usual. I wonder why the media forgets the Bush43/Mandela love fest back six or seven years ago?

Mike: " After he took power he treated his Boer opponents better than we treated our WW2 enemies at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals."

If were just the Axis leadership that we tried, imprisoned and killed following WWII, that would be one issue.

At war's end, captured German prisoners were defined, by the US, as "Disarmed Enemy Forces", not POWs, thus, in the eyes of the US, denying them Geneva Convention status. As a result, over a million DEPs were entered into involuntary labor forces in the UK, France, Belgium, not to mention some 3 million in Russia.

Food and medical relief from international agencies to the civilian German population was totally barred for over a year after the War's end, and severely limited for another year thereafter.

There was no intent of "Reconciliation", but rather, wholesale retribution, and if Henry Morganthau had prevailed, it would have been eternal retribution.

Shall we call Harry S. Truman a "terrorist", the countless Americans who agreed with the Morganthau Plan a "Terrorist Organization" and the United States, that officially instituted these actions a "Terrorist State"? And this was during the post War "Peace". I guess we can overlook Dresden, Hamburg, Pforzheim, because they were "strategic, war time" exterminations of civilians. But then, perhaps we didn't kill enough German civilians during the formal war, and just had to complete the job from May 45 until Jul 47?

Mike and Aviator, aren't you guys supporting my (and some of Jim's) points? Who is a terrorist and who is a saint is capricious. A bomber manages to win and his politics agree with mine (or at least mine today) and he is a saint. A bomber is against my politics and looses; he is a T.

I prefer to call things what they are. I have been a professional analyst of one sort or another pretty much my entire adult life. IMO, lasting improvement,progress can only happen after we have developed an understanding of how we, they and things really are. This requires disciplined objectivity.

I like chief's mil article very much. I read them all. I object to his political opinions strongly b/c he rails against "conservatives" and yet adheres to the above thinking - perhaps not consciously at times - and what could be more conservative than the mind of a caveman?

When I have said that less federal government would be a good thing, Chief has responded repeatedly at various times as if elimination of the fed gov't would result in a Mad Max kind of world. But aren't we already in a Mad Max kind of world as a result of the fed gov't (e.g. my first two paragraphs and what Jim and Brooklyn Red Leg have said)?

As far as I can see people like Chief really mean that they just don't want Mad Max on their front door steps. Fine. That's reasonable, crude and simple. Just don't dress it up as "progress" and expect me to jump on the band wagon and, moreover, don't hypocritically accuse me of being the primitive maniac in the room.

Back to Mandela, "He did not use the "winners are king, losers are pirates" policy of Hanoi. After he took power he treated his Boer opponents better than we treated our WW2 enemies at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals...."

Yes, Mike, Mandela talked this talk out of one side of his mouth and perhaps extended his right hand in the spirit of this way, but his left hand was doing something else and his proxies were walking a different walk. I'll give him this; he was a good PR man.

Certainly his legacy is not good. SA, once a successful economy and nuclear power, is a mess today. "Boers" that have not fled live in little fortress enclaves with armed security guards. Violent crime, disease, illiteracy and anti white racism is rampant.

no one:"Mike and Aviator, aren't you guys supporting my (and some of Jim's) points? Who is a terrorist and who is a saint is capricious. A bomber manages to win and his politics agree with mine (or at least mine today) and he is a saint. A bomber is against my politics and looses; he is a T."

Please read my post again. I did not identify anyone as a "T" or a saint, nor did I take a political position. I simply asked a question about a given period in history (May 1945 - Jul 1947) that has been glossed over, neglected, ignored or whatever, so that the general understanding is that The Marshall Plan and the "grand humanitarian reconstruction" of Germany, by the beneficent victors began on or about 9 May 1945.

So tell me, what is you take on JCS 1067 and the period in question? Saints, barbarians, terrorists or what?

Aviator, my take is that the way former German soldiers and many citizens were treated (e.g. forced labor, lack of proper nutrition and medical care) was wrong; albeit understandable to a degree. What was done was based on a sense of the need to totally subjugate the Germans, totally subject them to a grinding defeat after two world wars in less than 30 years. This may have seemed to some to have actual strategic value. There was also a lot of clean up to do after the war and the thought was "you broke it, now you fix it". And, of course good old hatred and need for revenge played a role too, I'm sure.

Definitely not saints, definitely not terrorism......closer to barbarism.

Sadly, there is not a lot published on the JCS 1067 period, although government archives have a lot of info. A Medical Service Corps CGSC classmate, back in 83, wanted to do his Thesis on something in the order of "Post Hostilities Health Care Delivery to Indigenous Civilians by Occupying Military Medical Units". He figured there was more than enough material around on battlefield health care delivery and wanted to study something else. So he figured there had to be some great examples in Post WWII Germany. What he found was there was nothing delivered. Which led him to dig further into the whole JCS 1067 (Morganthau Plan) rationale and implementation. As he was doing his research, he shared his shock with the rest of us in our Section.

I cannot remember a single one of the 15 of us in our Section who didn't hold the stock in trade inaccurate notion of our amazingly beneficent treatment of the German civilian population beginning on or about 8 May 1945.

Do some reading. It is saddening to see how many highly placed leaders voiced rather barbaric feelings towards the German population.

In addition to the suffering imposed upon the German civilian population, there was the related issues of millions of "displaced persons". The "Harrison Report" gives some insights to the crude treatment of Jewish DPs, for example.

"He only rails against those anti-American radicals who think that they are conservatives and that want to turn America into Haiti or Somalia or some other rat-hole with small or weak government."

Somalia, for those geniuses that cannot be bothered to actually get their history from anything other than MSDNC asswipes, was a failed Socialist state. It was a hellhole that had NOTHING to do with a Libertarian/Minarchist (let alone a truly Anarchist) state.

Somalia is a failed state. It has been a failed state since independence from colonial rule in 49. It did not go Commie (socialist as you call it) until 69 and then for just over 20 years and during most of that time was in a civil war. It has not been socialist since 91. So I would say that it is a third world rathole because it does not have a functioning government. It does not matter whether it failed because of socialism or colonialism or warlordism or religious whackos or feudalism or unbridled capitalism. I suspect each had a part. If you seem to think different that is fine with me.

BTW my comment above regarding 'anti-American radicals' was not addressed at Libertarians. Minarchists are a new one on me. Guess you can always learn something no matter how old you are. I would not want to say anything for or against them until 1] they get their act together and agree on what to do about taxation, and 2] I would like to know more about their definition of fraud and how to protect against it.

Aviator, very interesting history. I was vaguely aware that something like the JCS 1067 period in question had occurred through anecdotes related by a German family (their son was a friend) that had immigrated to the US in the 1950s (I think). You're right about the lack of available info. What I have found confirms my initial reaction - barbarism and for the reasons I outlined. Again, just my opinion.

Mike, I am a libertarian that believes some federal gov't is necessary (maybe I am a minarchist?), but nothing like the behemoth we have today. I am an advocate of local government tailored to local needs and the idea that citizens can vote with their feet under such conditions. I will happily pay taxes to a responsive local government. I do not feel good about paying taxes to an unresponsive unrepresentative dishonest authoritarian imperial throne in DC.

I am unmoved by arguments pro BIG GOVT than assert that chaos would ensue without it. First, most people in my camp are not suggesting NO fed. Second, to reiterate my earlier point, we already have chaos - it's just exported chaos - largely. There is also ample chaos at home too.